INGLEWOOD, Calif. — On Sunday, the basketball court at Rogers Park was refurbished to celebrate the new HBO series “Winning Time,” based on the Lakers Showtime era. DeVaughn Nixon is one star of the show and had to go through intense training.

“Got all of us into the best shape of our lives,” Nixon said.

He was cast in the role of his father, Norm Nixon. The real Norm spent six seasons with the Lakers in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

DeVaughn had to audition against his brother and other actors to get the coveted part of his dad.

“So, I spent a lot of time with him, made a lot of phone calls to him, picked his brain, asking about the different relationships he had with all of the players on the team,” the younger Nixon said. “I didn’t have to do too much research because it’s my father, but I still put it in. I put in the work.”

He worked especially hard with his physical transformation. He worked with elite basketball trainer Idan Ravin for two years. Ravin has trained the likes of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, and went through the same process with the actors in “Winning Time.”

“Becoming a superstar player takes a lifetime of work and we only had a couple years to do it, so it was very intense, very hard, very serious, but at the same time, it was humbling, it was gratifying,” Ravin explained.

DeVaughn said all the work will be worth it when Lakers fans see the series about the beginning of the team’s glory days.

“It’s really cool, because there are a lot of things I actually didn’t know,” he added. “You know me being close to the situation. There are a lot of things that are revealing. I think the audience is gonna love it. I think it’s a unique piece of television and I think people are gonna have fun with it.”

For him, it was the role of a lifetime portraying his father in a story about the golden age of LA basketball.

The Lakers are not supporting the show and are not involved with it. They will have their own docuseries coming out on Hulu later this year.